Battleships May Drop Anchor For Good

Criticism Follows Cheney Proposal

July 02, 1990|By DAVID EVANS Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON — The Navy is retiring its battleships, leaving the service without the kind of floating artillery it may need for gunfire support in Third World conflicts, according to naval experts who say guns have a place in today's missile-armed

fleet.

The departure of all four active battleships, possibly as early as 1995, was included recently by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in the package of Pentagon cuts that would be necessary to shrink America's armed forces by one quarter.

In addition, according to internal budget documents, the Navy has decided to retire at least two of the four earlier than 1995.

One of those two ships scheduled for retirement, the USS Iowa, is based at Norfolk Naval Base along with the USS Wisconsin.

Hampton Roads had been scheduled by next year to lose both battleships to new homeports - the Iowa to Staten Island, N.Y., and the Wisconsin to Ingleside, Texas.

The Navy's other battleships, the New Jersey and the Missouri, are based on the West Coast. The New Jersey is also scheduled for retirement.-

Retiring the ships was likely hastened by the turret explosion aboard the Iowa last year that killed 47 crew members and has left a lingering pall of concern over the safety of the ships' 16-inch gun batteries.

The battleships also are expensive to operate, and their crews of 1,500 are equivalent to the manning needs of five destroyers - key points to a Navy facing personnel and budget cuts.

However, these cuts are happening at the same time the focus of the Navy's activity is shifting from possible confrontation with the Soviet fleet on the high seas to operations in coastal waters, where ships with heavy guns may be most needed.

"Guns matter," declared Robert Murray, a former undersecretary of the Navy who supported bringing the battleships back from mothballs in the early 1980s.

"We don't want to be inventing Third World threats, but they're a reality. And when the Navy and Marine Corps are engaged close to land, the armor and striking power of a battleship make a vital difference," said Murray, now the executive vice president of the Center for Naval Analysis, a think tank where the Navy's future is a subject of daily consideration.

Even if the battleships go the way of the dinosaurs, Murray said, "Having guns on ships like our Spruance-class destroyers is a good idea."

However, once the battleships are gone, the 5-inch guns on these lesser combatants will be the only guns in the fleet, and some experts dismiss them as popguns.

What's needed, they say, is a better balance between missiles and guns. They propose some ships be outfitted with an 8-inch gun that came within a hairsbreadth of going on the Spruance-class ships a decade ago.

Indeed, the prime advocate of that 8-inch gun project, now-retired Rear Adm. Edward Carter III, said there is a place for guns on the fleet of the 1990s because the target determines the choice between using a gun or missile.

"If you've got a target like a Kirov cruiser that has high value to the enemy and is a high threat to us, the preferred weapon may be a missile like Harpoon, because we've got to hit him before he hits us," Carter explained. A Harpoon missile has a 60-mile range, three times the reach of an 8-inch gun.

"On the other hand, against a missile boat that has low value to the enemy because it's expendable but whose weapons are a high threat to us, the choice of gun or missile is a wash; it depends more on the range he's detected," Carter said.

"You've also got targets like enemy logistics ships that are a low threat to us but of high value to him. And, you'll have targets that are of low value to the enemy and may be a low threat to us, like auxiliaries and trawlers. In these cases, the gun predominates as the weapon of choice," Carter said.

Capt. Thomas Turpin, who commanded two ships armed with missiles as well as guns and was the Navy's project manager for 8-inch guns before he left the service in 1986, said, "The problem with the Harpoon, which has a radar seeker in its nose, is that the missile decides which is the right target."

For example, three Harpoons fired at three enemy vessels may all home in on the one with the greatest radar reflection.

"We have less range with the gun, but we've got surgical accuracy," Turpin said, citing tests where the Navy sank a destroyer target with 8-inch shells equipped with laser seekers, getting direct hits with the first shots.

The other advantage to guns is staying power: Ships with guns carry 500 shells or more in their magazines, while vessels with Harpoons carry only eight of the missiles, which cost about $1 million apiece, Turpin said.

He recalled another major limitation to Harpoon from his days as a commanding officer.

"You can't reload Harpoons at sea. They're too big, too heavy, and you need portside cranes to remove the empty firing cannisters bolted to the decks and to replace them with a fresh load," he said.